Report urges minimum terms for murder

Judges should be allowed to impose minimum jail terms for murderers — including up to “whole-life sentences” — under plans drawn by the State’s legal advisory body.

The Law Reform Commission (LRC) also recommends the axing of the mandatory minimum 10-year jail term for drug dealers — a proposal backed by drug projects.

The LRC recommended a Northern Ireland-style system for murder cases, where recent sentences of 20-plus years, and as high as 35 years, have been handed down.

The proposal has been welcomed by families of homicide victims.

The LRC recommends:

*The mandatory life sentence for murder should be retained;

*New laws that will allow judges set minimum terms that must be served by murderers;

*Presumptive sentencing for drugs and firearms offences — including repeat offences — should be repealed and not extended to other offences;

*These should be replaced by structured sentencing guidelines drawn up by a judicial council.

The LRC said Ireland was the only country in the common-law world without a system for minimum terms for murders.

Under the law, courts can not distinguish between cases at the upper end of the scale and those at the lower.

It said the system in the North allowed for a “whole-life sentence”, but said these were rare. In one instance in which it was imposed, it was reduced, on appeal, to 35 years.

Other recent cases include a minimum sentence of 21 years for former dentist Colin Howell.

Joan Dean of Advocates of Victims of Homicide Ireland said: “I am very pleased they have come up with this. Certainly the recommendation to give judges the power to set tariffs is something we have advocated in the past.”

She said that while there was a mandatory life sentence, judges cannot affix actual terms the convicted must serve.

“We all accept there are degrees of murder and sentences should reflect that.”

The report said mostof those sentenced under the presumptive 10 years for supplying drugs were “low-level drug mules rather than high-level drug barons”.

Anna Quigley, co-ordinator of the Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign, said the proposal reflects the reality: “In the 1990s [there] was clear-cut distinction between drug dealers and addicts. The campaign said: ‘Addicts we care, pushers beware.’ But the reality is not as clear-cut. It is more a continuum, with a lot of people using involved in selling drugs.”

She said dealers had become “more sophisticated” and distanced themselves from contact with drugs.

“A lot of those sentences are not the big players, so what’s been proposed reflects the reality on the ground,” said Ms Quigley.

Despite calls for minimum sentences for sex offences — most recently against the background of a suspended sentence for the rape of a 14-year-old — the LRC recommends against extending minimum sentencing.

*On Thursday, the Irish Examiner will publish a special investigation supplement on crime in Ireland.